Tag: NEN

Volunteers needed to bring LOVE back to Gorgie Farm!

The new folk at Gorgie City Farm are seeking volunteers to assist in bringing the popular visitor destination back to life, ahead of the farm opening its doors again to the public as LOVE Gorgie Farm on Saturday 29th February. 

LOVE Learning, an education and social care charity that supports vulnerable individuals by using innovative ways to engage them in learning, announced it was taking over the city farm in January after the farm went into liquidation in 2019. 

The charity is now looking for volunteers to help prepare the site in time for its official opening date at the end of the month. Activities for the volunteers will consist of organising and tidying up the site to make it presentable and safe for both the public and the animals. 

Volunteer days will take place from 10 am – 3:30 pm over the course of the next two weekends: 15th, 16th and 22nd, 23rd of February. Volunteers do not have to stay the whole day, even an hour would be great. 

After the site opens its doors to the public it will remain open 7 days a week and will be free for visitors. LOVE Learning intends to keep using the site as a city farm as part of their portfolio of environmental projects. 

In addition, LOVE Gorgie Farm will procure educational services to vulnerable children through animal and forest therapy.

It will also provide a range of professional apprenticeships and Scottish Qualifications Authority awarded qualifications, as well as organise social prescribing and wellbeing therapies in partnership with the NHS.

Lynn Bell, CEO of LOVE Learning, said: “We are delighted to have taken responsibility for Gorgie City Farm. LOVE Learning know how treasured and important the site is for the community and we want to bring this back to the people of Edinburgh as soon as possible. 

“We are asking anyone that might have been involved with Gorgie City Farm in the past, may have a fond childhood memory of the farm or that simply wants to come and give us a hand to contact us ahead of the opening. 

“There is a lot of work to get done prior to opening the farm doors on the 29th of February and the local community, businesses and volunteers will be key for the farm to thrive and achieve its full potential. 

“After we get the farm up and running on the 29th we will put in place volunteer activities for those looking to continue to be involved with our LOVE Gorgie Farm project going forward.” 

Volunteers are advised to bring lunch and wear old clothes and mud resistant boots!

Anyone looking to volunteer should contact LOVE Learning at

 Gorgie@l-o-v-e.org.uk

Genius Brewing donate £10,000 to Doddie charity

Genius Brewing have presented Doddie Weir OBE with £10,000 for the My Name5 Doddie Foundation at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh.

Genius Brewing are official fundraising partners with the My Name5 Doddie Foundation. The company’s #5p4Dodde pledge donates 5p from every can of their Gen!us Craft Lager.

Genius Brewing’s Jason Clarke said: “Doddie has transformed the profile of MND and raised over £5m to help current and future sufferers. Genius Brewing is proud to support such an inspiring cause.”  

The Seven Kingdoms of Wester Hailes!

A TEAM of community researchers will join forces with academics to help improve their neighbourhood.

UK Research and Innovation yesterday announced its backing for the Seven Kingdoms of Wester Hailes, one of 53 new UK-wide projects worth £1.4million which will enable members of the public to actively contribute to research and innovation projects that affect their lives.

Part of the agency’s Enhancing place-based partnerships in public engagement programme, the project involves community partners working with Edinburgh Napier University to contribute to the local place plan being developed with support from the Scottish Government’s Chief Architect.

Wester Hailes is made up of seven distinct neighbourhoods: Calders, Clovenstone, Dumbryden, Hailesland, Harvester, Murrayburn, and Westburn.

Local residents there will get the opportunity to become community researchers, and get involved in a variety of placed-based activities with support from researchers from across the university. The work, backed by cutting-edge technology, will include virtual reality, oral and art-based storytelling projects and the creation of a book.

Previous research carried out by the university has shown that the seven neighbourhoods in Wester Hailes have a distinct identity, and the project will help local residents and organisations to better understand the challenges this presents and how creating a local place plan may help.

The collaborative approach in Seven Kingdoms of Wester Hailes – one of 25 place-based partnership projects to share a £500,000 funding pot – will bring new skills to the community and bolster its relationship with the university.

Project lead Dr Louise Todd, from the university’s Business School, said: “We are absolutely delighted to be leading on this fantastic public engagement and research initiative.

“This is an exciting interdisciplinary project that will involve researchers from across the whole university and at every stage in their academic career.

“Working with our network of community partners in Wester Hailes to co-create and co-design place-making activities, the project will be of tangible benefit to both the local community and to the university’s public engagement and research communities.” 

Dawn Smith, Edinburgh Napier’s Public Engagement Officer, said: “UKRI funding provides the opportunity to work collaboratively to support the community in developing its Place Plan, creating a legacy and a stronger relationship between local residents and the university.”

Placemaking inspires people to collectively reimagine and reinvent the public spaces as the heart of every community, strengthening the connection between people and the places they share.

Tom Saunders, Head of Public Engagement with UK Research and Innovation, said: “This is one of 53 pilot projects that we have funded, all using exciting ways that researchers and innovators can involve the public in their work.

“In 2020 and beyond, we will build on the lessons we can learn through funding these pilot projects to help us achieve our ambition of making research and innovation responsive to the knowledge, priorities and values of society and open to participation by people from all backgrounds.”

The projects announced yesterday actively encourage people who would not usually get involved in research to take part in ground-breaking discovery and innovation.  They cover a diverse range of topics from plastic pollution to period poverty, and net zero carbon emissions to air quality.

Another project will see farmers working with researchers in Devon to make informed decisions on future land management to deliver carbon emission targets.

And homeless people in the north west of England will help the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and the University of Liverpool to explore women’s experiences and perspectives of managing menstruation while living in deprivation.

Funeral Support Payment to be increased

Extra support will be made available for people on low income benefits to pay for the cost of a funeral.

The Funeral Support Payment’s rate for expenses such as funeral director fees, a coffin, and flowers, is to be increased from £700 to £1,000 for all applications received from 1 April.

The Funeral Support Payment is made up of three separate parts: burial or cremation costs; travel costs; and a standard rate for other expenses – and it is this element which is being increased.

Introduced in September last year, the Funeral Support Payment replaced the UK Government’s Funeral Expense Payment in Scotland, greatly increasing eligibility. It is intended to help alleviate the burden of debt faced by those on low income benefits when paying for a funeral.

Social Security Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville said: “At a time when families are struggling to come to terms with the death of a loved one, the last thing they need is extra financial stress.

“I am proud we are increasing the standard rate by 40% to £1,000 to support those paying for a funeral just months after introducing this important new payment.

“This increase, alongside the extended eligibility we have introduced, means the Funeral Support Payment is there to ease the pressures on up to 5,000 people annually at such a difficult time in their lives. So far the total average pay-out has been around £1,500.

“This benefit is part of the new Social Security system we are building from scratch for the Scottish people, with fairness, dignity and respect at its heart.”

The flat rate payment for other expenses may be used towards any other funeral expenses such as funeral director fees, a coffin, and flowers.

Those eligible for the Funeral Support Payment must be living in Scotland, have had the nearest relationship to the person who has died, be financially responsible for the funeral and be on a qualifying benefit or tax credit (e.g. Income Support, Jobseekers Allowance, Universal Credit, Employment and Support Allowance, Pension Credit, Housing Benefit, Child Tax Credit, Disability or severe disability element of Working Tax Credit).

Around 5,000 people are expected to be supported annually by the payment.

For more information or to apply online go to: https://www.mygov.scot/funeral-support-payment/

Streets of Shame

Friends of the Earth Scotland has ranked the country’s most polluted streets for 2019, and the results show Scotland is failing to improve air quality. Once again, Auld Reekie’s streets of shame include Nicholson Street, St John’s Road and Salamander Street.

Many areas across Scotland suffered from higher pollution levels in 2019 than in previous years.  Continue reading Streets of Shame

NEN: Top posts of 2018

It’s been a busy old year for your North Edinburgh News blog. National (Brexit) and international (Donald Trump) stories may have been making the headlines around the globe, but here in North Edinburgh it was a story about yet another closed local pub that was the most-read post of the year! The news comes as The Telford Arms has announced that it’s to close at the end of this month for a major refurbishment – and will re-open in March as The Scottish Engineer. Continue reading NEN: Top posts of 2018

NEN: we don’t often blow our own trumpet, but …

NEN hits vast majority of targets set by city council

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North Edinburgh News (NEN) exceeded eleven and partially met six of 18 targets set as part of the Contact in the Capital communications project, councillors heard last week.

North Edinburgh’s long-established newspaper and media resource managed to hit targets set for 12 months, despite only embarking on the project in August –  fully FOUR MONTHS LATE – and through no fault of our own, I should add!

The NEN failed to meet just one of 18 targets: it failed to hold two ‘open door’ type events during the duration of the project.

In mitigation, it should be said that the NEN’s Board was busy dealing with other things: in particular, persistent attempts to undermine and ultimately derail the project almost from the day it started.

Malicious insinuations and allegations made by local individuals were subsequently fully investigated by the city council and found to be totally without foundation. However the allegations did damage to the project in terms of time – many hours were spent gathering evidence and information to rebut spiteful allegations; time that could have been spent working on positive aspects of the project – things like ‘open door’ days!

However, that’s behind us now and there is a lot to be satisfied with in the report (see below). Yes, it’s a pity we couldn’t have got started sooner, and it’s also a real shame that so much time was wasted on negative things, but we got there – despite the detractors. And imagine what we could have achieved in a full twelve months!

What’s next? We’re looking to recruit new Board members. Our present board has shown admirable commitment to the community newspaper but there’s a need for new blood to help share the load and take the organisation forward.

Would you be interested in joining the NEN Board? Do you have skills and experience that would strengthen our team? If you’d like to be involved, please send us an email telling us what you could bring to the NEN and why you’d like to be part of the NEN team. Keep it short and simple – say a maximum of ten bullet points, around 200 words – and send it to northedinnews@gmail.com

We look forward to hearing from you!

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May date set for Spartans’ sports day

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Hundreds of local primary school children will be taking part in a major sports event being organised by Spartans Community Football Academy Event at Ainslie Park in May.

SCFA Youth and Community Worker Jamie Tomkinson said: “The Spartans Community Football Academy Sports Day will be held on the 20th of May. Eight local primary schools are involved – we reckon that will be around 350 P7s over the course of the day!”

Twelve different sporting activities will be delivered by local agencies on the day: Kabo boxing, Edinburgh Judo, Edinburgh Leisure, Fet-Lor, Granton Youth Centre and MY Adventure will all be supporting the programme – and Keith Cook, who is a five-time Commonwealth Games medallist, will share his fencing skills. NEN, North Edinburgh’s community newspaper, has been invited to cover the event.

“Lorna Cruikshank, one of our young volunteers, will deliver a hockey station and we have a local samba band coming along to create an atmosphere and do a show for the opening ceremony!” Jamie added. “Many organisations have come on board to support the day – Ainslie Park Leisure Centre are letting us use one lane of their pool for the triathlon and Nike, who were a major part of last year’s success, will be volunteering throughout the event.

“There’s a lot of organising to be done and we are putting the finishing touches to the programme but the Sports Day is going to be a lot of fun – we’re all really looking forward to it and I’m sure the P7s are too!”